were you supposed to fall? (I'm not sure anymore)
by Temptation Through Perception
Summary: She guessed she wasn't really supposed to slip, only fall. It didn't really matter, for she was following him. And the world was spinning again, still. He wasn't sure about anything at all. Were his parents there or not? Was it the same or not? Did it matter at all? The world was still spinning, and Luna Lovegood had gone, not slipped. [COMPLETE - Crescent Moon, Full Moon previous]


**Continuation of an idea I created in a previous oneshot, but the idea of the first is not really the same, so there is no need to read the first...unless you wish to do so. The oneshot is called _Crescent Moon, Full Moon_.  
**

**Warnings - None, unless someone doesn't really like the idea of looking different ways. I rate this simply because different people will simply see different things. It's the way the world works, I guess.**

**I wish all a good year of new.**

**-Raven**

* * *

And sometimes she starts falling.

(_towards the sky, here along we go_)

And she sees the tiny looks on her parents' faces when she tells them of the Nargles clustering around Harry's head, and she sees the looks she gets when she tells someone about the things hiding under their tables at home when they're in the fields.

(_it's all about the looks, it's all about seeing_)

It's all about knowing (_all about wondering_).

All about something, she knows.

* * *

And sometimes it's all about falling (_towards the moon_).

Because sometimes the moon tells her quite a bit (_sing-song listen to the voice as we sing_) and she follows each instruction because she's _Lily_ (_luna_) and it's the one thing that divides her from being Luna Lovegood (_the moon, they're singing_) in her parent's springsummer eyes (_brown and green_) that make everything try to bloom when they're together, and then fade when they're apart.

And sometimes it's all about falling (_for the moon, for her_)

And he watches the _redredered_ fall of her autumn-red hair, and all he can think of is the fact that her eyes _should be blue_, but they're green…he thinks.

Sometimes they're brown, and his are grey (_shouldn't they be blue? _

_Wait, who?_

_Which one?_

_Were there really ever two?_

_Wasn't it always two?_

_Wait for only one name, shouldn't there be?_

_Was there ever?_

**_I don't think_ **_**so**_).

* * *

"You're not smoke, you know" she tells him, earnest as anything and pretty as the stars (_moon, for far prettier is she_). "You don't have to act like it."

"And you're not Luna Lovegood" he says, and he doesn't know why he really is saying it but he's doing it and it doesn't matter what's going on when he says it, but he does. "But I can see them telling you to be her."

(_I'm watching, you see_)

Flashes of disjointed, chopped images mostly revolving around the previous generation, with her father and mother and professor telling her stories of a girl who was almost _exactly_ like her.

She blinks up at him, and he's taken back to a world of another girl, with a bronze-and-blue scarf wrapped around her neck and dreamy gray eyes and white-blonde hair and necklaces made of butterbeer caps.

(_Is it really true that you see?_)

"But that's not what we were talking about" she says, and he can tell that she's agreeing with each and every one of his unsaid, half-made feelings. "Because you're slipping too quickly" she says, and he takes a step back, thrown into a world of perfectly made white-sheeted beds and pale hair spilled across the mattresses. "You have to _go_, not slip, even if they want you to slip."

[_because that's what we did last_]she adds silently, and they both hear it reverberate through the atmosphere (_and the universe beyond_) about them.

And his head is racing faster and faster as his heart beats and she's still looking up at him as she says, "after all, the world is going to keep spinning, because the Jarmites keep throwing our dreams about, so high in the sky."

(_Do you think that they're going to fall back down to us now?_

_Ever?_)

And she's got her head tilted into that _obvious_ expression that everyone coos over and only they (_and the spirit up above_) know that he does as well, even as unconsciously as she does it, red hair spilling over into the exact pattern that the color of his hair did so long ago.

"That doesn't make sense" he says, knowing about how much it makes _absoluteperfectsenseandhedoesn'twantitto_.

"Of course it does," she agrees with his unspoken sentiment as they talk of a world before them, more of behind than ahead even as she's being molded into something else. "Why should it?"

(_Why shouldn't it?_)

For his world is turning faster and faster, winding ahead and ahead while she's working to keep on rewinding everything that they've _evertoldher_ all for him and the world explodes to shrapnel, pelting everyone but them.

(_as time stands still_)

* * *

"There's a Nargle on his shoulder" she confides lightly, blue-and-bronze scarf wrapped around her neck in an odd fashion that people will _almostalmostalmost_ say is Luna Lovegood's, but is not quite, just as his green-and-silver scarf is twisted around in a pattern that mimicks the world before and behind them as they walk.

(_There's an arrow in his heart_)

"Of course there is" he says, carefully looking away, for if one looks at a Nargle's eyes, they can be tumbled in them, and he's not sure if they'll be tumbled or tumbled back straight, because if he knows anything, it could (_might_) happen, and he's not sure if he wants that to happen. "Of course there is" he says, looking back at the little first year, while he's in the next, and thinking about how he's got all of the talk about his parents and _isn'titsoparallel_.

(_Are you going to keep telling me?_)

And the world spins back as they watch, and he's seeing a huge man yell at a tiny boy, and he knows that the girl beside him wants to curse the man into oblivion, but neither of them can do anything but watch.

It's an awful existence for two children, just watching.

"It's alright" she says, patting his hand, and he looks at her. "It's always alright. The Crumple-Horned Snorkacks are watching, you know"

"Of course they are" he says, and he can remember that exact tie of the scarf, done by someone of black-hair before them (_not blonde like they want to say, like they always say_). "Of course they are"

(_Am I going to break the cycle here and now?_

_No_)

And sometimes he's watching and no-one can figure it out, but he's reversed and flipped and he's gotten the hair and eyes from someone else, because his parents want to love him but they're not really there (_at least for him_), and she's whispering a word of acknowledgement and knowledge and hope to him as she stands with a piece of raw meat in her hand, a skeletal, majestic horse that he wants to say is part-bat beside her. "We believe in you" she says quietly. "My daddy and I"

(_I'm keeping the world here, you see_)

And he's standing there and wondering what to say, but he still says "Thanks, Luna" in a clearing of the forest while he's at his worst in the middle of the fifth year and she's watching everything in the world with those dream-filled calm eyes that feel like they're never going to end but people imagine they were supposed to.

(_and so they do, even when they don't_)

* * *

And it's turning even further and further and in the end, she's wearing a silvery-white dress with a bouquet of white-and-yellow flowers in her hands as she walks down the aisle towards him as he stands there in the black-and-green robes, because as much as everyone wants to say it's Lily Luna Potter walking up the way, it's really obviously Luna there, and standing at the end is really Harry, because in the end, everything parallels back and no matter how much you want one thing, there's always the other coming along.

Because Lily Luna Potter is always LunaLilyMalfoy and her husband was Scorpius Malfoy but in the end his name really should have been something more like HarryMalfoy because Luna Lovegood had really never been one person.

(_always two, always two_)

One name that made for both of them, because maybe _HarryPotter_ wasn't that good of a name for the two.

(_only good for the crowds - who cares about the crowds?_)

And maybe that's really why he had white-blonde hair and grey-eyes, and that's why Lily Luna Potter always had to tell him that he shouldn't be smoke.

(_because Luna Lovegood never slipped, she left_)


End file.
